


with bones made of shatterglass

by nantes (titians)



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 19:35:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1177060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titians/pseuds/nantes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Percy Jackson is still Percy and, in her own way Bianca di Angelo will always be Bianca di Angelo too. (Because not all things that are dead have to stay that way.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	with bones made of shatterglass

> _You must listen to me. Holding grudges is dangerous for a child of Hades. It is our fatal flaw. You have to forgive. You have to promise me this._   **D I A N G E L O**

 

i.

Percy rolls his shoulder before rising out of his chair with a sigh. In front of him, the bright, white page of a Word document glows on his monitor -- he has a few lines of the introduction to his essay written. The knocking comes again at the door, quick raps of knuckles on wood, and he pads quietly along the floor towards the sound.

On the other side of the door, a brunette smiles at him, Percy blinking eighteen times; too many for a human, so he covers his right eye with the back of his left hand, hopes his wrist covers his left eye and inhales a breath through his mouth.

Her smile gets wider. "I'm really sorry if I woke you," she apologises. Dropping his hand from his face, Percy notes the way the collar of her shirt falls away from her neck, revealing the lightly freckled skin of her shoulder between her loose, dark hair. "I'm from across the courtyard and I saw my cat climbing in your window and I felt I should come over and just, uh, see if everything was ok." Her tone lifts at the end, like she's asking a question. Percy just nods.

Then turns and looks over his shoulder. Larry -- that's what he's named the cat but he's positive that isn't the grey tom's name -- is sprawled across his couch, casually washing his paw.

Percy grumbles, "Uh, no, he's fine. No bother at all."

"Right, ok," she nods in time with each syllable, causing her hair to move back over shoulder and cover up her skin. Percy thinks it's weird that he misses it but there are other freckles across her nose for him to look at. "Well, I'm Bianca from 6C, if you ever want to bring him back."

"Percy," is all he can come up with in reply.

 

 

 

ii.

Her window is directly across the courtyard from his. After finishing seven pages of his essay , Percy takes a well-earned -- in his opinion -- break with a cup of coffee, watching Larry the cat contort himself out of the barely-open window and make his way across the courtyard.

He thinks about her face. She's paler than he remembers, although it has been ten years, more. And she died last time he saw her. But that's definitely Bianca di Angelo, exactly the face she would have grown into -- the face Percy would have imagined for her, her grown up self, if he had ever bothered to think about her since then. Percy justifies it by reminding himself that Nico has thought about her enough for everyone. It only makes him feel worse.

Bianca appears at her window, her arm reaching around the tap to the handle, letting Larry inside. She picks him up, the grey cat pawing at the heathered cotton of her shirt and rubbing his head off her chin, and they disappear into the apartment.

After the count of eighteen, Percy loses interest waiting for her to come back and returns to his essay.

He ends up asleep on the keyboard, managing to type out three pages of 'n' with his forehead.

 

*

 

When he wakes up, Percy brushes off the events of last night as a dream. That is, until Larry, his tail bolt upright and a small triangle shape clump of fur sticking up on his back, hisses at a bird, the sound sort of like static on a television -- and what Percy wouldn't do to watch some mindless television these days -- and it all comes back to him.

He lets Larry in, the bird long gone despite the cat's best efforts and keen hunting abilities, while he waits for the coffee to brew. He rubs himself against Percy's legs, the beige cotton of his sweatpants brushing off his legs, before wandering off to take over Percy's couch.

Percy half-smiles at the sight of him. Until Larry raises his back leg in the air and starts to wash himself.

Huffing out a breath through his nose, Percy goes back to his essay. Two more pages in, he begins to consider going for a jog, maybe having a shower and changing out of the pants he has been wearing for the best part of the last week. But that require a lot more effort than Percy can manage right now.

 

 

 

iii.

Larry shreds the arm of his couch. 

Percy doesn't actually care -- he found that couch about to be thrown into a skip in Hoboken and bartered with the guy for it. But it seems like the perfect reason to go and speak to Bianca. So, with Larry tucked under one arm and a fresh pair of jeans on, Percy goes left out of his door and left again until he's on Bianca's corridor. He sends a quick thanks to the Gods that she told him her apartment number because working it out from the windows, counting in from the hall wall and factoring in the empty apartment -- at least, Percy thinks it's empty because he never sees any lights on -- he would never have worked it out. He writes Bianca off as some sort of genius for managing to do it yesterday.

She answers the door with a pair of black ballet slippers hanging around her neck, probably tied by the ribbons at the nape of her neck. Percy pictures the knot underneath her bun, her dark hair all scrapped away from her face.

"Hi," she greets, sounding a little short of breath. "I see you've got Danté."

Larry meows at his owner from the curve of Percy's arm. His tail swishes at Percy's back. "Uh, yeah," he nods, "he shredded my couch."

Bianca opens and closes her mouth exactly four times. She nods. And sucks in a breath. "I-" she begins, but cuts herself off. "Shit, sorry. I- fuck, how bad is it?"

Percy shrugs. Larry -- Percy supposes he should start calling him Danté, since that's the name his real owner gave him -- wriggles in his grasp, struggling to get down. Percy lets him go easily and he leaps towards the floor, the sound of his paws oddly comforting as he brushes his tail off Bianca's legs and heads further into her apartment, abandoning the other two at the door.

"It's not really why I'm here."

"Oh?"

"No. I'm actually wondering how you're alive." Bianca makes no move to deny it, no attempt to shut him up although anyone (any God) could be around. "I watched you die, remember? But yet, here you are."

Her tongue makes a noise against the roof of her mouth before she speaks. "You'd better come in then."

 

 

 

iv.

If she wasn't sitting right in front of him, Percy wouldn't believe it. Zeus, Zeus, the god would wouldn't bring Luke Castellan back from the grave, despite all the pleas from Camp Half-Blood, allowed Hades to bring his daughter back if he promised no one, especially no other Demigod, would ever find out. Percy doesn't know what to say, so he nods. A lot.

"I went to high school. I took back up ballet. I was-" Here, she stops, taking a breath and dropping her eyes to her hands, folded on her lap. "I was a regular teenager, really."

"Must have been lonely," Percy notes, not really asking for an explanation but still wondering how she did it all on her own.

He watches the way Bianca shrugs her shoulders, how it makes the shoes around her neck move against her chest and the small bit of hair in front of her ear fluttering for a moment. "I mean, I wasn't completely alone; Dad helped where he could and your mom was there too."

Obviously he isn't that good at disguising his feelings, because Bianca's hand finds Percy's knee, her eyes seeking his. "Don't be mad at her, Percy," she states, softly. "She was sworn to secrecy."

"Who else knows?"

She takes the slight change in subject easily, "Hermes checks in with me from time to time. And I guess Apollo knows, maybe -- I thought I saw him one day and you know when you make eye contact with someone without meaning to and then you're stuck staring at them until they look away? Well, that happened." Pausing, Bianca wets her bottom lip with her tongue. "But no one from camp, none of the others."

Percy doesn't need to ask if Nico knows.

"How did you recognise me?"

"I recognised the-" but Percy stops himself before he can say 'the bones in your face', even though that's the truth. The thought flitters around his head for a moment; perhaps a daughter of Hades would like that, take it as a compliment. But he eventually says, "Your eyes. You have the same eyes."

 

 

 

v.

When it turns out that someone you used to know -- someone you watched die -- is actually alive and living in the same apartment building as you, and you sort of share custody of a grey tom cat with two names, it is impossible not to become friends. Especially when you know that the person who was dead who isn't dead anymore hasn't got a lot of friends to begin with. 

(Not that Percy's only friends with Bianca because he feels sorry for her, oh no. He definitely doesn't feel sorry for her. In fact, if he's honest with himself, he's sort of envious of how normal a life -- normal by demigod standards, anyway -- she got to live. If she hadn't had to die first to live it, Percy would ask for a trade.)

He invites her out to drinks, tells her he knows this place where the one of the barman can guess your favourite drink just by looking at you. Percy invites Bianca out after three weeks of staring at the curve of her neck and the jut of her collarbone above the v of her t-shirts and the freckles across her nose. And still manages to convince himself it isn't a date.

Percy is still telling himself it isn't a date -- despite the sheer blouse she wears that makes him want to put his hands on the curve of her waist and the fact he puts on his best jeans and a proper button up -- when Bianca kisses him. It takes him by surprise, the push of her mouth against his as he releases a small sound from his lips before properly responding, lifting one hand to cup her jaw and moving his mouth against hers, pushing back.

It's still not a date though. Just two friends, one of whom was dead for a week, who live in the same apartment building who share custody of a grey tom cat with two names, kissing each other.

 

 

 

vi.

First waking up next to her, Bianca looks dead, the bare skin of her shoulders just above the duvet and starkly unmoving. Percy reaches out a hand to touch her, traces a pattern around her freckles. She is so much paler than he remembers, definitely paler than Nico, but that possibly comes from the fact she was dead. Dead for a week.

Underneath his hand, he feels her breathing, the light rise and fall of her body as she lies on her chest, on arm neatly tucked under her face.

When Percy speaks, his breath makes her eyelashes flutter. "How come I can see you?"

"Because I'm not a ghost," she replies, voice thick with sleep, somewhat muffled by the pillow. "Your hands are cold," she continues, turning her face away.

Percy rolls his eyes. "You know what I mean. How come Hermes hasn't turned up with a message from Zeus telling me to get my ass into a new apartment because I have broken the rules."

"From what I've heard, you generally break the rules."

He laughs at that. And lifts his hand away from her. "Want some breakfast?"

"What time is it?"

"After nine."

"Sure. I'm late for rehearsal already; why not be good and late?" He hears her turn over in bed, the sound of the sheets rustling with her as she moves. Bianca is wearing his shirt when she walks into the kitchen, her hair a mess of dark tangles around her face.

 

 

 

vii.

"Your brother is coming to town," Percy states. He points at Bianca with his chopstick, despite the fact he's got an egg roll speared on the end of it. The brunette looks up from the pages in front of her -- another one of Percy's essays, the seventh this semester -- and meets his blue eyes, her face blank. "You should see him."

"No."

At least she gives him some sort of verbal response. But her eyes return to the size 11 font.

Percy inhales a breath through his nose before he begins. Alright, so he may have practiced this a small bit, in front of the mirror, but Bianca isn't a push over. (Percy thinks it has something to do with Olympian genetics.) "I know of your existence and nothing bad has happened. Why can't we tell Nico?" It seems logical enough to him. "It would give the kid some closure -- his whole life revolves around the fact you died."

Naturally, she goes off script. "I've spent the last ten years letting my little brother think I was dead."

"He'll understand."

"You just said 'his whole life revolves around the fact I'm dead'." Bianca places the pages on the ground, one of them crinkling loudly. "And now I'm supposed to tell him, 'oh, sorry about all that, Nico, but I've been alive the whole time'?"

Percy quickly slips down to the floor next to her, wrapping his arm around her thin shoulders. "He'll understand."

 

*

 

"You got a cat," Nico notes, pointing at Danté -- Percy has finally accepted that the cat's name is Danté -- who sits like a sphinx, observing them both from the kitchen table.

Percy nods. "Technically he's not mine. Wasn't originally mine," he amends. "He actually belongs to your sister."

It takes the younger man a few seconds, but then he laughs. Like Percy has told the funniest joke he has heard all day. With a hand on his stomach, like laughing is such an exertion, Nico says, "I thought I heard you say the cat belongs to Bianca."

"He does."

Nico's face quickly shifts into a deadpan. It's frightening how alike the two siblings actually are. Percy takes a step backwards, doing a quick sweep of his surroundings for anything Nico might throw at him. "Danté is Bianca's cat. And now, I guess, my cat too. Since I'm dating her." Across the room from him, the brunette thins his eyes. As he clenches his hand into a fist, his skull ring catches the light coming in from the window.

"That's really not funny."

"He's not trying to be." Bianca stands in the doorway of Percy's bedroom. Danté makes a chirping noise at the sight of her, not bothering to move but happy to see her all the same.

Nico's mouth falls open, his breath coming in huge, loud gasps, while Percy turns around to look at his girlfriend, who scratches awkwardly at the back of her neck. "I'm sorry," is all she can manage to say.

Nico bursts into tears, his whole body shaking with it. His big sister is across the room, arm wrapped around his shoulders before Percy realises she's moving. Long, bony fingers claw at the cream cotton of her shirt. Percy hasn't seen Nico cry this much since he was told Bianca died. Her shoulder knocks her brother's chin.


End file.
